9 replies to this topic

[Koniving]

A little over a year ago my mother board was damaged by a power surge. It essentially fried the Ethernet, and kinda made the built-in realtec audio jacks a bit wonky. For a length of time only the front audio jacks were reliably usable... and I use the term "reliable" rather loosely.

Some time ago, the audio jacks are now unusable. Regular audio works only by itself. Plugging a microphone in causes the computer to think the mic jack is a headphone jack. Meanwhile the headphone jack no longer gets detected. The mic by itself without a headphone being plugged in somehow enters the twilight zone, completely undetected unless the headphone also gets plugged in.

Yesterday I found an audio card from early 2000's, a "Creative Audiolabs 128." I'm hoping to use this to bypass the issues with my motherboard as a replacement is still not in the foreseeable future.

Any thoughts as to how well this might work?

[Cold Darkness]

wouldnt it be wiser to just opt for a new motherboard (even if it is not planned)? there may be other issues with the MB that potentialy could result in damage to other components. and according to what you write, the damage appearently got worse, too.

but i am not an expert on the matter. id just go the safer route considering that MBs are usually not that expensive. even good quality ones.

[Hydrocarbon]

It's probably a PCI card, not PCI-E, which is pretty uncommon on modern boards. Many still have 1 PCI slot. If yours does, it should work fine. It sounds like the add-on items were affected, not the south/northbridge. If your vid card is fine, your PCI slot is probably fine too.

As far as the card itself, audio cards have changed little. In fact they changed so little that adapting them to PCI-E took ages because nobody wanted to spend the time altering the internals. I have used several PCI cards as well as a PCI-E card, all had zero issues & good playback. I think most people's speakers are worse than their cards.

[Vxheous]

You should probably just get a replacement motherboard for cheap just for right now (you can usually get something for like ~$80, as long as you are not looking at getting a board with overclocking potential, etc).

[Peter2k]

Koniving, on 29 December 2015 - 04:15 PM, said:

A little over a year ago my mother board was damaged by a power surge. It essentially fried the Ethernet, and kinda made the built-in realtec audio jacks a bit wonky. For a length of time only the front audio jacks were reliably usable... and I use the term "reliable" rather loosely.

Some time ago, the audio jacks are now unusable. Regular audio works only by itself. Plugging a microphone in causes the computer to think the mic jack is a headphone jack. Meanwhile the headphone jack no longer gets detected. The mic by itself without a headphone being plugged in somehow enters the twilight zone, completely undetected unless the headphone also gets plugged in.

Yesterday I found an audio card from early 2000's, a "Creative Audiolabs 128." I'm hoping to use this to bypass the issues with my motherboard as a replacement is still not in the foreseeable future.

Any thoughts as to how well this might work?

you're running a TITAN, so you have a modern system

old sound card = PCI
no can do (except if you do have one old PCI slot)

as long as you did not OC your CPU you could get a new small board for ~50 bucks, or a used better one in the meantime?

if it's only a sound issue for now
I had a noise on my cables on an older board with less quality sound
used a USB soundcard as a solution, since those are way cheaper than buying dedicated cards, well as long as you're not also using some kind of surround sound

Edited by Peter2k, 31 December 2015 - 09:32 AM.

[Grimm Peaper]

As others have said, if it's only your sound you can either get a usb sound adapter or else use a usb headset. USB headsets do not use your built in sound device, like your realtek, and show up separately under device manager. Most gaming headsets are usb nowadays anyway so that would probably cost you nothing.

[Koniving]

Grimm Peaper, on 31 December 2015 - 12:42 PM, said:

As others have said, if it's only your sound you can either get a usb sound adapter or else use a usb headset. USB headsets do not use your built in sound device, like your realtek, and show up separately under device manager. Most gaming headsets are usb nowadays anyway so that would probably cost you nothing.

In my area, I've had an issue with finding places (yes, even have the problem with Best Buy) that sells USB headsets for reasonable prices (that is prices below what it would cost to replace the motherboard, only reason I haven't replaced the motherboard yet is because I'm afraid once I transfer the processor and all over to the new motherboard something might get messed up. I have horrible luck with processor pins breaking; rather do that when I get a new processor at the same time).

I didn't think of it but yes it's a PCI card.

The USB soundcard solution sounds pretty neat and possibly more reliable at the moment than finding a non-Turtlebeach headset (my luck with Turtlebeach is they last approximately 6 months and break in some way. Usually on the headset's band and speakers.)

Thanks everyone for the input!

[Pskonejott]

A good sound card is going to give you much better audio than most built onboard motherboards, and the USB solutions. However, I doubt you are going to be able to find drivers for Windows 7 onwards for that particular card. So, a cheap USB sound card is probably going to be your best bet right now...

[Golrar]

Playing games you won't notice a difference from a modern ALC on board chip and a dedicated card unless you are going optical or SPDIF to a full surround system. It's just not worth it any more.

A USB sound card is the best bet and the cheapest and usually available anywhere, even Walmart or Kmart.

[Lord Letto]

Pskonejott, on 31 December 2015 - 03:54 PM, said:

A good sound card is going to give you much better audio than most built onboard motherboards, and the USB solutions. However, I doubt you are going to be able to find drivers for Windows 7 onwards for that particular card. So, a cheap USB sound card is probably going to be your best bet right now...

This! I Have a Old Sound Blaster Live!(ct4830) I Got For Free, Sadly I Can't Use it though as there's no Windows 7 Drivers, I Think Vista is the Newest Available if not then XP, Worked fine though when I Gave Linux a Try though when I Built the Computer 1st.